Internet users frequently use websites hosted on the Internet to perform a variety of actions. Typically, however, websites are configured for particular uses, or to communicate on particular platforms, e.g., to promote efficient website development. Without an ability to allow different types of websites to communicate with one another, website developers can be prevented from developing multi-purpose websites capable of communicating with a variety of different platforms and services.
As one example, consumers widely purchase products both in physical stores and on merchant websites offering products for sale. However, typically consumers find a product on a merchant website to purchase the product; typically, for example, consumers cannot find information about a product on a non-merchant website, and initiate a purchase of the product at that website. Building a non-merchant website that can facilitate transactions can be inefficient and costly for developers, at least due to difficulties in determining what merchants (if any) may stock a particular product, and in reconciling differences between how various merchant platforms process requests and/or process transactions.
Some known systems can use application programming interfaces (APIs) for retrieving product information from merchants. APIs, for example, can specify commands for retrieving data from merchant servers, for use in product transactions. Such implementations, however, involve a website developer who is generating a website that may include information relating to a product for sale at a variety of merchants to support API commands for each merchant, even if the website is not a merchant website (e.g., including social media websites, and/or the like). Such known systems, therefore, typically involve time and resource-intensive website implementations, as developers may store merchant APIs for facilitating merchant transactions, even if the website being developed by the developers is not a merchant website. Additionally, different merchants can operate using different e-commerce platforms that may use different APIs to communicate with websites. Thus, a developer using such known systems typically uses multiple APIs to communicate with different merchants using different e-commerce platforms. Each developer for each website may accordingly store copies of each API, resulting in an inefficient use of server resources.